"I was speaking to a journalist who'd just been made redundant from the Daily Record and when they found out the rates freelances were being paid these days, they just couldn't believe it," says Liz Hodgkinson, organiser of an unofficial freelance writers' strike on 1 April. "The recession has seen massive cuts and a new, really disrespectful attitude amongst commissioning editors. Newspapers couldn't come out without freelances so we thought we'd show them what it would be like if we stopped working."

Inspired in part by the success of the Hollywood writers' strike in 2007, Hodgkinson is hoping freelances will down tools at midday and head for the pub. "It's Maundy Thursday which, in the old days, was a day off in Fleet Street," she says. "So you'd get what the printers used to call a wayzgoose – basically journalists and printers heading off in a charabanc to get pissed."

She's keen to make clear, however, that this is not an April fool's stunt. "Rates are down, publishers are taking more and more of our rights, people commission jobs and then don't bother replying or paying you if they don't run the piece, which never used to happen," she says.

Organised through the journalists' site gentlemanranters.com, London's Day of Inaction asks strikers to meet, appropriately, in a Fleet Street pub – The Harrow, formerly Daily Mail hacks' boozer. A venue in Edinburgh has not yet been chosen but the site will publish information nearer the day.

The NUJ is officially wary of endorsing Hodgkinson's move – "We are prepared to support freelance protests," the union's freelance organiser, John Toner, says, "but any moves we make wouldn't be effective unless freelances are prepared to organise themselves" – but points out this is part of a growing trend. Recently freelances for a number of magazine publishers, including Blueprint and Bauer, have collectively campaigned over rates and contracts with varying degrees of success.

Hodgkinson believes the writers' strike could be the first step in building freelance confidence. "It's a very isolated existence, freelancing," she explains. "We hope that getting us all together is the first blast of the trumpet from ground level and that this is just the start."